Today I get to pretend to be a big-time radio DJ, a regular Casey Kasem or Delilah*, by sending out this post by request to Mike Pope, one of this blog’s earliest followers. (If you’ve got a similar simmering question, drop a line at motivatedgrammar at gmail dot com and I’ll try to look into it.) He suggested I look into the debate between all of a sudden and all of the sudden, and it turned out to be a pretty interesting topic.
To state the situation briefly, all of a sudden is the undisputed champion in contemporary English. Whether you’re looking at Google Books N-grams, Google N-grams, the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), or the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), it’s a sudden by far. The gap between the two seems to widen as the formality and amount of editing increases. Google N-grams, composed of web data, has the smallest ratio between the two, while Google Books N-grams, composed of polished published works, has the largest:
Google: 12.5 a suddens per 1 the sudden
Google Books: ~50 a suddens per 1 the sudden
Part of this is that the sudden seems to be a recent option. It started blowing up on Google Books only since 1985, and doesn’t appear at all in COHA until the 90s. Furthermore, there isn’t any complaint about it in any of the grammar books on my bookshelf, so that suggests that it wasn’t much of a concern before 2000, when the most recent book I looked at was published. (Garner’s Modern American Usage mentions it in the 2003 edition.) But it is definitely a concern for Internet grammarians:
Urban Dictionary: “All of the sudden: A stupid variation for ‘all of a sudden’, which people who are stupid use.”
“All of the sudden” and “all the sudden” are not correct phrases. They are slang.
“All of a sudden” is the correct and only way to say it. “All of the sudden” is bad grammar and wrong. […] What’s ‘the sudden’? And what’s ‘all of’ it anyway? Sudden is an adjective. So, I use All of a sudden.
Of course, that last argument makes no sense; if the sudden is an ungrammatical usage of an adjective as a noun, there’s no reason why a sudden would be acceptable. Not that it matters; all of a/the sudden is an idiom and thus grammaticality becomes of secondary concern. If an idiom is acceptable, then it’s acceptable, whether or not the grammar predicts it would be.
So let’s set aside the specific insults for a moment and look at why the sudden is thus maligned. Some claim that all of the sudden is regional, and place it in various low-prestige localities. In this discussion, for instance, various commenters localize it to either Cajun Louisiana, the general Southern U.S., the Midwestern U.S., or northern England, all of which have little in common except for grammaticasters’ disdain for their Englishes as lazy and uneducated.
But I don’t see much evidence of localization in contemporary (American) English. The first two celebrities I found using the sudden were Matt Lauer and Michael Douglas, both born in the New York/New Jersey area. To test the claim a bit more fairly, I compiled a quick map of the 100 most recent American examples of all of a sudden and all of the sudden from Twitter. The red dots represent tweets containing the phrase, with darker dots indicating more tweets from that town.** Before you look at the caption, can you tell which map is which phrase?
![[Twitter maps]](https://motivatedgrammar.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/suddens.jpg?w=490&h=132 "suddens")
Maps of tweets containing all of a sudden (left) and all of the sudden (right).
I see no evidence here of regionality. That’s not to say that the sudden was never regional at any point in its history, but I think that right now the sudden is merely informal and/or non-standard, rather than regionalized.
Speaking of history, the interesting thing is that, even as we now say that the sudden is the new form, it was also the earlier form. The Oxford English Dictionary shows the sudden as the earliest — and now archaic — form, appearing in examples such as:
I thinke, that none can iustly account them selues Architectes, of the suddeyne. [1570]
I was‥compelled‥to answere of the sodaine vnto such articles. [1590]
Of course, the history doesn’t matter now, but I do love when a variant that’s now considered improper used to be the standard. Maybe in a couple hundred years, the two options will have switched again.
Summary: All of a sudden is the standard idiom in contemporary English. All of the sudden is a newer non-standard variant that does not appear to be geographically localized. Interestingly, the sudden is the original form if you go back to the 1500s.
—
*: I actually was a radio DJ for 25 minutes late one spring night in 2002 on WPRB 103.3 Princeton. Unable to find enough familiar songs in the station’s archives, I was forced to play a track from Spokane’s soporific album Leisure and Other Songs alongside the pounding metallic God Inside My Head by the Catherine Wheel. It was a daring juxtaposition that I hope was appreciated by the three or so people listening to college radio at 2 in the morning.
**: By the way, I’m putting this utility together on a website that I’m intending to launch next Wednesday, so you can do similar comparisons yourself.
Motivated Grammar 
49 comments
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July 20, 2011 at 7:59 am
Athel Cornish-Bowden
various commenters localize it to either [ … ] or the northern U.K., all of which have little in common except for grammaticasters’ disdain for their Englishes as lazy and uneducated.
I suspect that you mean northern England rather than northern U.K. I don’t think there is any particular disdain for the English associated with Edinburgh or Inverness, for example, though there may be for Glasgow or Dundee.
July 20, 2011 at 8:27 am
elevengoalposts
This is interesting. I’d never heard of “all of the sudden” before.
I am guessing that many of these “variants” occur because the correct expressions are not taught through formal education and/or at home.
Another expression which has been gaining “traction” is “legal beagle”, as opposed to the standard “legal eagle” – perhaps from such a person being sharp-eyed, sharp-minded, aggressive, tough, etc.
Of course, there is a website called Legal Beagle which is also reasonably apposite, suggesting a ferreting out of information, perhaps.
Care to comment?
July 20, 2011 at 9:09 am
Gabe
Athel: It was ambiguous in the comment I’m referring to, so I thought it might include Scotland as well. You’re probably right, though, so I changed it. Thanks.
elevengoalposts: I was surprised to learn this, but it turns out that “legal beagle” is just about as old as “legal eagle”: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=legal+beagle%2C+legal+eagle&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 “Legal eagle” is more common, but “legal beagle” persists. The OED cites both of them in its entry for legal.
I suspect you’re right in suggesting that they both make sense, but in slightly different ways. A “legal eagle” strikes me as the archetype of a modern lawyer; sharp suits, sharp tongue, an eye for detail. A “legal beagle”, on the other hand, calls to mind the lawyer’s underlings, the legal team poring through the subpoenaed information in hopes of finding the missing piece of evidence.
July 20, 2011 at 9:57 am
Dw
Cockney-style TH-fronting would make “all of a sudden” and “all of the sudden” sound more similar.
TH-fronting has recently spread beyond Cockney to infect much of southern England, so I wonder whether there’s a phonological component to this development.
July 20, 2011 at 10:26 am
Erin
The variant I hear more often leaves the “of” out entirely: “all the sudden”. Presumably this form is extended from the more common “all the time”.
July 20, 2011 at 11:00 am
Stan
Fascinating. Most of the Google hits for “all of the sudden” seem to be online forums, but Wiktionary has compiled a few historical examples. It was also used by Welsh composer John Cale in this interview, but I don’t know when it took place.
July 20, 2011 at 5:13 pm
The Ridger
I expect this is akin to “it’s the hell of a thing” instead of “it’s a hell of a thing” which I first encountered in the LAPD novels of Dell Shannon back in the 70s (though I think the books are a bit earlier). I chalked it up to the SoCal fondness for “the” – as in “they closed the 405!” – and didn’t complain, but it always, always sounded very weird to mean.
July 20, 2011 at 5:36 pm
fornormalstepfathers
You are destroying my English! Stop it!!! :-)
July 20, 2011 at 7:07 pm
Carolyn
Ah, well, perspective is everything, isn’t it?
When I first became aware of the ‘all of a sudden’ variant, after I left the deep South, I thought people were just saying “All of the sudden’ in a (differently) sloppy way.
They scan about the same, as I don’t pronounce both the ‘v’ of ‘of’ and the ‘th’ of ‘the’; the ‘v’ sound disappears.
Elevengoalposts, permit me to dispute your ‘correct expressions are not taught’–
It’s just an idiom, and it has variations.
July 21, 2011 at 5:19 am
Flesh-eating Dragon
My first thought was to think that “all of the sudden” sounds very strange indeed, every bit as strange as “I woke up with the jolt” or “It was the surprise to see you”.
But upon analysing the familiar phrase “all of a sudden”, I realise that a less idiomatic paraphrase would be “all in an instant”, which illuminates how I understand the phrase syntactically. I then examine the hypothetical phrase “all in the instant”, and realise it would make sense as an abridged form of “all in the same instant”. I wonder if that parallels the thinking behind “of the sudden” at any time in history.
Just thinking aloud.
July 21, 2011 at 6:19 am
elevengoalposts
@Carolyn
Yes, it’s an idiom and they have variants, as you say.
My point was that from Junior through Secondary Schools in the UK, there used to be (until the last 60s at least) a lot of formal grammar and expression teaching, especially at Grammar Schools and Public Schools. Because there was also a strong emphasis on essay writing – especially in English Literature – the use of “variants” (would have been regarded as errors) were picked up immediately. In addition, traditional media – broadsheets and the BBC – would never have used variants.
As grammar, spelling and standard English expression generally became regarded as “less important” in the education process, then the standard forms were not there to be heard and seen as they used to be.
In the end, I suppose, one could ask whether it really matters one way or another – it’s up to the individual, except that certain people, including some employers, make judgments on such things.
July 22, 2011 at 7:31 am
This Week’s Language Blog Roundup | Wordnik ~ all the words
[…] it’s and its; and K International examined irregular verbs. Motivated Grammar hashed out all of a sudden versus all of the sudden, and reviewed Write More Good, the new book by The Bureau Chiefs, the same folks behind the Fake AP […]
July 26, 2011 at 7:03 pm
Jonathon
What I find fascinating is that while there isn’t evidence of regionality in the sense of nice, clean isoglosses, there is some weird regional stuff going on. For instance, Idaho and Colorado have “all of a sudden”, while Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming have “all of the sudden”. So there appears to be some regionality, but it seems pretty random.
July 28, 2011 at 8:49 am
Introducing SeeTweet « Motivated Grammar
[…] been doing off and on for the past few months, one that I previewed a bit in last week’s All of what sudden? post. It’s called SeeTweet, and it generates maps with the locations of the most recent […]
April 13, 2012 at 9:41 am
It’s “All of A Sudden” not “All of THE Sudden” | THE WORD O’ WHEATON
[…] I don’t know where you people are picking this up from. Perhaps you’ve hopped in a time machine and gone back to the 1500s recently. […]
July 30, 2012 at 12:37 pm
ElfinMagic
I have been from the southern region of the U.S. for 50 years, and have only used “all of a sudden.” Until the last few years, I have never heard anyone say “all of the sudden,” which sounds strange to me, I must admit. I was hoping to do some research and find that it is grammatically unacceptable. Oh well, acceptable or not I don’t like it!
August 8, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Alla Dasudden
I’ve always said “all of the sudden” and had assumed that whenever I read “all of a sudden” that it was incorrect. Then, as I started to notice “a sudden” more and more, I figured it must be an acceptable or regional variant. In fact, I just saw it (a sudden) again today, which prompted me to do a little online research and so I found this page (among others).
Looks like *I’m* the one who speaks funny! Oops.
FWIW, like Micheal Douglas, I’m from New Jersey. I also lived many years in southern California, two places cited as regional users of “the”. Also, as another commentator mentioned, “of a” and “of the” can sound quite similar when reduced (unstressed) in a phrase. Finally, as someone else posted, I also hear and probably use sometimes “all the sudden”.
Anyway, “all of the sudden” sounds, looks and feels right to me. Apparently though, some people would judge me negatively by that use, so I guess I’ll modify my usage in written communication (especially formal written communication).
August 10, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Kris
Never even heard of “all of the sudden.” It makes sense to me, but as Flesh-eating Dragon pointed out, it sounds just as funny to me as ““I woke up with the jolt.”
As a student of Japanese, the dichotomy between “a” and “the” in these examples makes me think of the difference between the particles “wa” and “ga.” In Japanese, you have three kinds of nouns in a sentence: subject, object and TOPIC. A sentence in Japanese could translate roughly like “Bob (topic) his dog (subject) wagged his tail (object)” or “Bob’s dog wagged his tail”). However in many sentences, where there is only a subject/object or a topic/object, the difference between topic and subject are not as clear; many Japanese linguists find it an object of controversy and confusion. But basically “wa” (topic) is the noun the sentence is “about” more generally, and “ga” (subject) is merely the noun performing the verb action.
To say “all of THE sudden” seems like a “wa” sentence, like “THE sudden” is a specific sudden that we’re talking about, and “a sudden” is more abstract, a measurement of time (“a mile” vs. “the mile”).
I know that didn’t make much sense but that’s how I thought of it.
November 25, 2012 at 9:01 pm
No More Gatekeeping - Lingua Franca - The Chronicle of Higher Education
[…] of the sudden “A stupid variation … which stupid people use”; and dozens of commenters on Motivated Grammar ascribing the use of the sudden to a particular region or a mishearing of “of a.” But the OED […]
December 13, 2012 at 7:09 am
Dave
My bosses were just arguing about this and in trying to settle the matter we discovered this site. I love it! Anyway, I would deal with this problem by saying “on-sudden-wise.” That will please nobody. Nobody except me, that is.
March 2, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Dale
In my humble opinion, it should be “a sudden”. To me, the phrase is supposed to imply that something happens at random, in an unspecified moment. Using “the sudden” tends to imply a specific sudden whereas “a sudden” seems more random.
April 4, 2013 at 3:03 am
Laroquod
What is this one universal sudden to which everyone keeps referring? I want to know where The Actual Sudden is so I can travel there and walk in unannounced. That would be the only way I could anything ‘all of The Sudden’.
In the meantime, when I do things unexpectedly, I’ll just use any ordinary sudden I find around.
September 24, 2013 at 4:10 pm
Chrystal
You think very similarly to me. While reading this post, every relevant thought that popped into my head was always mentioned just a couple of lines after my thought occurred. :)
October 22, 2013 at 9:24 am
Greg
If it’s so idiomatic (which is to say, grammatically tortured), and its earliest appearances are identified, why the worry over who’s messing with the damn thing? Let usage dictate this pathetic phrase.
Suddenly, I could care less. Or couldn’t.
January 13, 2014 at 3:30 pm
Mathme
Solution (which Greg implies): Suddenly. Now, let’s never discus the correct article to precede suddens again. Sorry, either way, it sounds really bumpkiny to me. I was just reading a VERY brief article out of Oklahoma City (maybe 150 words) and the phrase “All of the sudden” appeared twice. It made me wince, so I decided to see which usage was “correct.” However, the more I thought about it, the answer for my taste is “neither.”
June 15, 2014 at 10:07 am
GrammarFanatic
I noticed my kids began using “all of the sudden” in the mid ’80s in S. California. I tried my best to correct it, to no avail. Kids are now in their 40s The other saying that drives me nuts is “on accident” as in “I broke the vase on accident”. I use “by accident”. The “on accident” phrase started around the same time as “all of the sudden”. My guess is that because it’s the opposite of “on purpose”, folks thought “on accident” was the correct phrase . . . no idea really why it started, but I really don’t like it.
August 20, 2014 at 10:18 am
John Hamilton
I haven’t done any research on this debate, but I was taught, “All the sudden” as the proper way by writers and teachers. Nowadays, the American English gets slaughtered and slang becomes the norm. Pretty soon, it will be ttyl instead of “Talk to you later” being an acceptable way of writing.
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I prefer to speak whatever the language rules were back when I learned it. Of course, I can adapt as time progresses, but don’t tell me it used to be that way or should be this way. We all have our own liking and preferences. Of course the language has evolved so we don’t use thee, thou, hence-force or wither-to anymore, so there is something to be said for adapting and progressing.
I have it heard it spoken all three ways from “a”, “the” and neither was “of” part of the phrase. And so the saying goes, “Beauty (speech, in this instance) is in the eye of the beholder.”.
It all comes down to preference and comfort level when using one of the 2, or 3, phrase forms.
September 5, 2014 at 7:02 am
- Amish 365 Amish Recipes Oasis Newsfeatures
[…] you say? There is some evidence that my all of THE sudden is an ingrained regional variation. You can read more on this obscure topic here. I’m still not sure it settles […]
September 23, 2014 at 2:59 pm
lazyboyniko
Please stop spreading stupidity. Neither form of the idiom makes any sense therefore neither is proper. Sudden is an adjective so “a sudden” and “the sudden” doesn’t make any sense. Use the word suddenly if you want to be grammatically correct
September 23, 2014 at 6:31 pm
Daniel
Lazyboyniko:
1. Idioms don’t have to make literal sense.
2. According to Merriam-Webster, “sudden” is both an adjective and a noun. As a noun it’s now a “fossil word” — i.e., a word that is only used as part of an idiomatic expression, such as the noun version of “bygone” (“let bygones be bygones”) or “petard” (“hoist by one’s own petard”) — but that doesn’t make it any less valid within that idiom.
July 20, 2015 at 6:41 pm
Jacob
All of the sudden is older than all of a sudden. Observe. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/all-of-a-sudden.html
November 18, 2017 at 11:18 am
Rebecca B
It’s a question of the difference between the articles “a” and “the.” “A” is an indefinite article, referring to any of the noun it precedes; for example, “I want a ball.” – I don’t care which ball, I just want one of them. Whereas, “the” is a definite article, referring to a specific noun; for example, “I want the ball.” – I don’t just want any ball, I want that ball, right there.
When looking at the phrase, “all of a sudden” verses “all of the sudden,” the latter is the only one that make grammatical sense. Theoretically, you would be speaking about a specific event that occurred. “I was washing the car when, all of the sudden, the tree fell on top of it.” It happened at that specific time; “all of THE sudden,” THAT sudden, THAT moment, right there. Not just any moment, I’m speaking about THAT one.
The problem with the jolt example (“I woke up with a jolt.”), is that you’re not referring to a specific jolt that woke you up – you’re just saying that one of them woke you up. If you were referring to a specific one, you’d say, “That jolt woke me up,” or “The jolt woke me up,” assuming that the person you’re speaking with knows what jolt you’re talking about.
April 24, 2018 at 6:16 am
Robert Everett
“I actually was a radio DJ”….
Really?
Being well versed in the proper placement of the word “only”, my ear tells me “was actually” might be correct.
If I’m wrong I will no longer assume the title of “Grammar Nazi”
June 24, 2018 at 6:10 pm
jboerner88
How many suddens are there? If there was only one cat in the world the it would be the cat, especially if we were referring to all of it and not just a segment of the cat. This said, regardless of history do people not discover the proper way to do things over time and education. I would like you to define how many suddens there are and then it would be a valid cause that you could have all of one sudden but it’s not the only sudden. But if the word is solely ground to a singular subject then it would still be referring to that particular sudden. I think, regardless of etymology, the founders of the phrase and your subsequent rationale have been proven the newer, smarter way is actually more accurate since there, in my humble opinion, is only one sudden that is being referred to here and therefor would be the sudden and not a sudden which would imply it was one among many.
June 24, 2018 at 6:29 pm
jboerner88
For what it’s worth I’d still like to know what it means if you only have part of a sudden? And why when we clearly already had the word “suddenly” did they not just save themselves some time (is time really saveable?) and just use the more succinct version.
July 11, 2018 at 9:24 am
Ian Lemmon
Sudden is an adjective isn’t it? I save breath and just say “suddenly”.
November 25, 2018 at 4:44 pm
Mike McClaren
They are BOTH WRONG! Both are bad grammar the word is SUDDENLY. It works any where the phrase “all of a sudden “ shouldn’t go. The only reason I can think of to use it in writing is to create a certain voice.
November 25, 2018 at 4:48 pm
Mike McClaren
Just saw the other comments, I agree all of the sudden definately sounds the more grammatically correct, round about, redundant way of saying suddenly
February 26, 2019 at 11:40 am
Christopher Barto
all of the sudden ?
until i could tell her the sudden it was
it had to be all of a sudden because
i could not impart a colloquial feel
to a thing not yet know although suddenly real
‘til its suddenness-ness was its own
April 3, 2019 at 3:37 am
jim sterrett
I’m from Maryland and I’m old. I only saw/heard (at least consciously) “a sudden” the the past few years. It just sounds wrong to me.
July 5, 2019 at 6:51 pm
‘All of a Sudden’ or ‘All of the Sudden’? - Home
[…] and also from Ohio also said he’s an “all of the sudden” kind of guy. But Gabe Doyle of the Motivated Grammar website looked at tweets that used “all of a sudden” and “all of the sudden” and didn’t find any […]
August 4, 2019 at 3:10 am
‘All of a Sudden’ or ‘All of the Sudden’? – SD Blog
[…] also from Ohio also said he’s an “all of the sudden” kind of guy. But Gabe Doyle of the Motivated Grammar website looked at tweets that used “all of a sudden” and “all of the sudden” and didn’t find […]
October 15, 2019 at 9:48 pm
James
When the internet became popular, bad grammar proliferated. People who were not well read and could never have gotten anything published suddenly began filling cyberspace with unedited grammatical garbage. So you can’t look to online sources for a legitimate answer. When you look at written sources before 1990, you overwhelmingly find “all of A sudden”. We can then conclude that people who use “all of the sudden” or “all the sudden” do so because they misheard the correct version, and because they did not read much. The first generations to grow up with internet and social media (Millennials & Gen Z’s) are the worst offenders for butchering traditional idioms. This trend is providing plenty of comedy as they grow up and become “professionals”.
February 4, 2020 at 2:02 am
Madhaniel
I’ve thought about this exact issue before and I’ve come to the only logical and correct conclusion about the source of this incorrect phrase. When you did a Google book search, did you restrict the dates? I’ve found evidence that this phrase, as well as many other phrases that idiots get wrong, didn’t show up with any sort of significance before the Internet became widely used. That’s about when people stopped reading and if you don’t read anything, you only HEAR these phrases so you spell them phonetically. I can’t think of other examples at the moment but I have a list of about a dozen examples that are exactly the same as this. So the cause is stupid people who never read. Very easy to back this up with data. Next problem: people who use the word “actually” in 5 seconds while they’re speaking. Different reason for it, same idiots though.
February 4, 2020 at 2:07 am
Madhaniel
HAHA! Wow!! I didn’t scroll to the bottom of these comments before I wrote mine. After I did I saw the post above mine which pretty much says the exact same thing. That’s such a relief! I love knowing that I’m not wrong and there’s other people out there who aren’t morons! Fantastic. That made my day!
March 9, 2020 at 11:03 am
John Adam
Reading this reminded me the phrase “on a sudden” I’ve seen in older literature, as in this 19th-century example: “Or, being deaf and smitten with its star, / Should, on a sudden, almost hear a lark”; “The Rose” by Isabella Valancy Crawford.
Perhaps “sudden” once was used as a noun. The evidence of phrases like “on a sudden” and “all of a sudden” suggest that. The Online Etymological Dictionary makes no bones about: ‘Noun meaning “that which is sudden, a sudden need or emergency” is from 1550s, obsolete except in phrase all of a sudden first attested 1680s, also of a sudayn (1590s), upon the soden (1550s)’ [https://www.etymonline.com/word/sudden#etymonline_v_22306].
Although we’ve lost “sudden” as a noun, its role as a noun as been well preserved in the idiom “all of a sudden”; it should not be dismissed as being ungrammatical or uneducated just because it doesn’t apparently make sense now.
April 16, 2020 at 10:26 pm
English Can Be Weird | Maine Crime Writers
[…] prevalent. Maybe in another hundred years, the new options will be the standard, but according to Motivated Grammar, all of a sudden is the standard idiom in contemporary […]
May 30, 2020 at 1:54 am
Kerrie
If it’s something that takes place more slowly can it be some of a sudden
March 30, 2022 at 3:48 pm
Kristen
Like Billy Ocean, I just say Suddenly.
Also, accidentally instead of “by accident” or (gasp) “on accident.” *shudders*
Adverbs are our friends. Indubitably! 🤓